Since its inception in 1995, the Java™ programming language has become increasingly popular. (Java™ is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.) Java, which is an interpreted language, enabled the creation of applications that could be run on a wide variety of platforms. This ability to function across a variety of different client platforms, i.e., platform independence, and Java's relatively easy implementation of network applications has resulted in the use of Java, as well as other programming languages that provide platform independence, in endeavors as basic as personal web pages to endeavors as complex as large business-to-business enterprise systems.
Since Java applications, as well as applications embodied using other programming languages, and the Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) to which the applications connect, may be provided by many different vendors, a mechanism that enables these disparate computational entities to communicate with one another was needed. The Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) is a specification that addresses such needs. A J2EE compliant architecture provides a mechanism for integrating applications residing on J2EE-compliant application servers with enterprise information systems.
In order for applications to connect to users at clients as well as application and services at the EIS, a connection mechanism is required. Many installations employ the Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to enable applications to connect with users and other computational entities. The HTTP is a stateless protocol in which each user communicates with a specific application using a specific session. Accordingly, in present approaches, users will have multiple sessions created if they are accessing multiple web-based applications on a J2EE container.
Unfortunately, such conventional approaches do not resolve all connection issues. For example, information associated with a particular HTTP session is only visible within the web-based application being corresponding to that HTTP session. Accordingly, users interacting with a particular application using a first session will not have access to data stored in data objects of that application when the user accesses a second application using a second session.
What is needed is an improved mechanism for sharing sessions between web-based applications.